this isn't special
by altschmerz
Summary: This is the first time one of Mac's plans has gone horrifically pear-shaped in front of Riley and Bozer. This is most assuredly not the first time it has happened in front of Jack. (And it never gets any easier.) Or: the one where Mac falls, Bozer and Riley watch him come close to death for the first time, and Jack holds everyone (for the most part) together (for as long as he can)


well where do i start. i guess with happy first fic of 2018 to me? also i haven't watched season two yet because i've heard some worrying things and i wanna see how it pans out so, there's that, but i've heard some great things too? anyway.

it's my birthday on monday the 29th may as well celebrate with some found family h/c fic because that's about as on brand as it gets round here. let me know what you think! i can't think of anything i'd like more for my birthday than hearing from you guys, you've been so great to me so far.

* * *

 _This isn't special. Or this is special. But it's one answer, the same, for both of us._

\- Holly Amos, "We have no choice in the bodies that hold us."

* * *

The law of large numbers says something about probability. Something about frequency and probability and possibly monkeys with typewriters. Shakespeare? Bozer isn't sure how any of those things fit together, or what they mean, because the person he would usually ask about that kind of stuff is several hundred feet away, precariously balanced far too high up for Bozer to be even a little bit comfortable with it. Mac had said it would all be fine, he's done similar things a dozen times in the past, heights don't bother him, but Bozer hadn't been convinced. Nevertheless Mac had taken off with what he presumably at least thought was a reassuring grin, leaving Bozer in the van, antsy and bored. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the law of large numbers sticks like a burr that won't explain what it's doing there, and outside things progress tensely along.

With a lack of anything concrete to do right now, Bozer finds himself alone in his mind with only the precarious nature of Mac's current position and some nagging thought about math to occupy him. Normally, Mac would be talking. He would be chattering away in their ears about something or other none of them understood but would listen to anyway, because as long as Mac is talking, things are fine. As long as Mac is giving explanations more complicated than the original concept itself, things are _fine_. This time, there's just quiet, just a faint electronic buzz to remind them they're wearing earpieces at all. Jack is focused on some tactical thing, Riley is still on her laptop, and right now, Bozer would give anything for a task to focus on. Especially when, mid-attempt to decipher what the hell is so important about the law of large numbers right now, Bozer is the only one whose full attention is solely on Mac when the rope snaps, and Mac falls.

Riley and Jack notice almost immediately, hearing the startled shout over comms, drawing a sudden, sharp curse from Riley. The only thing worse than the shout, the shock yanked verbally out of him, is the sound Mac makes when he hits the ground.

There is no description for that sound except horror.

Of course, the objective of the mission itself is blown to hell as soon as that rope gives way. In a split second there stops being a mission at all, there stops being anything except Mac and a broken rope and the ground and horror, overlaying it all, _horror_. The flurry of motion that follows is nothing Bozer understands the intricacies of. He does know that the Bad Guys have left, though, given the distant squeal of tires and the way Jack flings open the side of the van, bolting out without any kind of suppressing fire, or ordering Bozer and Riley to stay put. Even with the large amount of question marks surrounding Mac's condition, his very survival, it's hard to believe Jack would make a call leading to the three of them getting shot to hell.

Throughout the whole scramble over to get to Mac, Bozer notices in the small part of his brain not absolutely screaming terrified - the small, _small_ part - that Jack hasn't said a thing since the moment Mac fell. There were none of his own questions and babbling, none of Riley's frantic attempts to get Mac to respond through comms. Jack is single-minded focus, wordlessly headed for his objective, the only objective left. Crossing the last few feet of the now empty parking lot, Bozer reaches the prone figure about the same time Riley does. Jack is already there, and his practiced efficiency remains a stark contrast to their disoriented panic.

Bozer stands over his best friend's body and the half-second, overpowering tidal wave of relief is stopped in its tracks, giving him the worst case of emotional whiplash in his life, when he is able to process anything else besides the fact that Mac is, indeed, still alive. Because while he might be alive, it's unclear how long he's going to be able to stay that way, how long he'll be able to hang on in that crushed, broken up vessel left behind by the devastating impact.

Mac is laying on his back staring wide-eyed at the sky, vision unfocused and searching, and the wet, broken sound of his breathing is a horrifying noise that will be making appearances in Bozer's nightmares for years to come, he's sure. A look at Riley shows her to to be thinking approximately the same thing. Jack, though, Bozer can't tell what he's thinking at all, because he's already crouched down next to Mac, head bent over him and face not visible to the half of their group still standing.

Crouched on the ground, with the leftover rainwater from the night before soaking into the knees of his jeans, the sole focus of Jack's attention is the young man on the pavement before him. His hands don't hesitate like Bozer and Riley do - Bozer and Riley who hang back, frozen, because Mac is so hurt, so still, except for reflexive movements, the shudders and twitches of a nervous system shot by a catastrophic injury and attempting to reboot itself. There is no expression on his face aside from blankness and shock, no attempts at speech. The only thing he's aware of is pain. Jack takes this in and somehow isn't completely paralyzed by that information, isn't blindsided and helpless in the face of what's happened. He settles a palm at the side of Mac's face, drawing Mac's wide, scared eyes to him as he talks, quiet but strong.

"Hey now," Jack says, his voice a low rumble. Bozer can't imagine what he would sound like if he tried to speak right now, but he would bet it would not be that steady.

A lot of things could be said about Jack Dalton, what sort of a person he is, where his priorities fell, what sort of responses he's inclined to in a given situation, but if someone were to ask Bozer to describe him and allow him only one word with which to do so, the word he would pick would be steady. Especially when it came to Mac, Jack is the most solidly dependable person Bozer has ever met. The man is like granite. It's nigh impossible to imagine something shaking him.

Then again, a lot of nigh impossible things have happened lately, and if anything could shake him, Bozer would imagine watching Mac fall - to what they thought could very well have been his death, and very well still _could_ be - would be what did it. Somehow, though, it isn't. Still, Jack's words are strong and his actions sure. Still, he's steady.

"Look at me," he says. "C'mon, buddy. There you go, there it is." Jack's voice is even and calm, barely the edge of a tremor running under it. "Just focus on me. It's bad, I know it's bad. It's bad and it hurts, but you're gonna be _fine_. Help's on the way, all you gotta do is keep your eyes open. I've never known you to back down from a challenge, don't start now. You can do it."

Without breaking eye contact with Mac, Jack raises his voice, the increased volume catching Riley's attention enough to process what he says.

"Riley. Ri, I need you to check the ETA on that ambulance."

"The mission-"

"Is _blown_. Your only mission now is making sure that bus gets here."

The sound Mac makes then, the choking gurgle, followed by the line of red at the corner of his mouth, distracts Riley before she can answer Jack's firm request. Mac is trying to talk now, sounds coming out in wet, gasping bursts of indecipherable sound. Finding it impossible is driving his panic up. His hands twitch voluntarily now, attempts at moving running the risk of exacerbating his already potentially lethal injuries. Riley says his name in a horrified breath, while Bozer takes a step back without deciding to. Jack, in yet another blatant display of surprising composure, keeps his cool, hushing Mac with a light tap of his cheek.

"Pipe down there, will you?" His voice cracks on the last word and he clears his throat, trying again. "You're obviously in no shape to be running your mouth right now, so we'll leave the talking to me, hey? I know what you'd say, here-"

And here he breaks into the middle of his own sentence, adjusting his voice into a parody of Mac's. "'Of course I'll let you do the talking, Jack, you're so good at that, all I'm good at is particle physics and building catapults out of lawn chairs and rubber bands.' Damn right I am, and I'll leave the rest of that to you then, okay? So you let me do the talking for a while."

It works, and Mac stops trying to force words out of his crushed chest, settling under Jack's instructions, the calloused thumb grazing over his cheekbone.

"Riley."

"Yeah," Riley answers quickly, dashing her wrist over her eyes and sticking the discarded earpiece back where it belongs. She turns around and talks quickly, relaying information about their location to homebase, who will in turn inform the paramedics that were dispatched as soon as the operation went sideways.

"Bozer," Jack says, and Bozer snaps to attention, tearing his eyes away from the horror-film red streak tracking down his best friend's cheek. "Run to the corner and wave the EMTs over when the ambulance arrives. It's a maze, and we can't move him until they get here. They've gotta come to us."

Bozer nods and takes off.

He hears Jack in the background, "Don't mind him, he's new, a little freaked out. Nothin' to be scared of. You're gonna be fine."

It only occurs to Bozer much later that he and Riley had been given jobs on purpose, specific tasks to keep their minds off Mac laying on the ground under Jack's hands, too hurt by the fall to so much as speak.

In the background as she talks on the earpiece, trading information back and forth with emergency responders, Riley can hear Jack faintly the whole time. Right until Bozer leads a pair of hurried paramedics over, Jack keeps up a steady stream of reassurances, joking and imitating what he thinks Mac's responses would be. Riley doesn't know how he does it. She can't find anything reassuring about this situation.

Jack though, he talks all the way through, praising Mac on his ability to keep his eyes open, telling him it's just a little longer. _Just a little longer, kid, they'll be here soon, you're doing such a great job. That's my boy. It's just a little longer. Just gotta keep breathing._

It's Jack who tells the paramedics what happened. Jack talks to the doctors when they reach the hospital. Jack makes arrangements, and gets answers, and handles everything, right up until there's nothing left to be handled and the anxious rush of the day gives way to a cold, terrible stillness that is in some ways almost worse.

At least that's how it feels to Bozer, who is pulled back to what seems like forever ago, sitting in the van with nothing to do except try and figure out the law of large freaking numbers. The rush has died. The rush, the urgency, the gotta get there now do this now there's no time has died, just like Mac somehow hasn't. He hasn't died and he's in the hospital, laid up in a bed, which is at least better than laid out on the ground.

Bozer can't go inside. He stands near the door of Mac's room, looks in through the window, but he can't go inside. Every time he tries there's something that stops him, and it's more than the caution that overwhelming Mac could be dangerous in his current condition. So he stands there outside and watches Jack swiftly go through some sort of mental checklist, moving from this or that or the other. Riley arrives at the room after not too long, and Bozer cringes, waiting for confusion or a rebuke, for Riley to shoot him a look and walk right in.

She doesn't. Riley stops outside next to him and Bozer can see the same hesitation in her that stops him from going in. Just like it had been in that damp parking lot, Bozer and Riley stand immobile and scared while Jack is the very image of confidence, moving like he's spent not a moment questioning what he's supposed to be doing, what his job here is.

Maybe it's the astronomical stress of the whole situation, maybe it's hatred of the helplessness he feels just as strongly now as he did when Mac fell, but Bozer whips abruptly towards Riley, the spike of something just this side of resentment making it into his voice.

"How the _hell_ is he so calm about this?" In the relative quiet of the hospital hallway, Bozer's accusation cracks out, and he winces, lowering to barely above a strong whisper when he continues, back braced against the wall. "How is he not _terrified_? He cares, I _know_ how much he cares, I've seen it since the day I _met_ him, but he… I don't get how he could watch that and not be _scared_."

"Boze." Riley's low correction draws Bozer's attention up to her, then following the line of where she nods to, indicating with her chin through the glass at the subject of their conversation.

Jack is pacing now, short, abrupt steps over the same fifteen feet of floor. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, hovering uselessly at his sides, coming up to clutch at the back of his head, wiping fiercely at his eyes. At one point he stops abruptly, looks at Mac, and says something Bozer can't quite make out, just a blurred together hum of words before he breaks into pacing again.

When he processes what's happening in the hospital room, the version of Jack found there is not the one Bozer had observed previously. Where before Jack had embodied practiced, experienced efficiency, where he had been strength and faith and a grounding force keeping them all anchored, it now looks for all the world as if, some time between Bozer last looking in and right now, Jack has come unmoored.

Jack's fist stops mere inches from the drywall that forms the room's flimsy margins, hand flattening out at the last moment to land with a fraction of the force intended. It's the first moment he's seemed truly out of control, and it spirals from there. He turns from the wall and faces the center of the room.

In all the years they have known each other by now, in one context or another, Bozer has never seen Jack stumble before, but he does now. One of his knees gives out as he attempts to walk to where Mac sleeps, and he lands with a disorganized sideways collapse in the chair set out by hospital staff. His body crumples into the chair, head dropping into his hands, and through the glass, Riley and Bozer can see Jack's shoulders heaving.

"Oh." It's a sound Bozer doesn't actually mean to make, a soft huff of chagrined air.

"Yeah," Riley answers, her voice just as subdued.

Unable to hear their conversation and either not knowing or not caring that he's being watched, Jack seems to be caught in the tailwind of the situation, spinning wildly towards the ground. His shoulders continue to jerk and shudder, and he shakes his head violently, once, twice. He raises his head to look at the young man passed out on the bed, one of his hands reaching out tentatively. It's a complete one-eighty from his previous surety.

"He just…" Bozer stops, shrugging. "When it happened, Jack just…"

His hands hadn't hesitated at all before, comforting and forestalling movement with the confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and that it would help. Now his hand shakes, hovering in the air over Mac, settling eventually over his blanketed chest. The heaving of his shoulders has eased to the occasional hitch, and he gets up again, resettling on the edge of Mac's bed. Leaving the hand on his chest where it is, Jack brings the other up to his head, brushing gently at shaggy blond hair. His palm stills over Mac's cheek, a mirror of when they'd been on the ground, just after the fall.

"Yeah," Riley says again, before Bozer can talk himself in circles trying to find his point. "It was a side of him I'd never seen before either, and then today, when Mac… It's gone bad before but never _that_ bad. And never when we were so far away." Riley's voice goes distant and quiet and she edges a little closer to Bozer. Bozer, who wants so badly to stop watching this, to rip his eyes away but can't, riveted to what's going on in the room he can't bring himself to enter.

So, yeah. Jack is scared. Jack is scared and Bozer feels like a chump for thinking he wasn't, but he just watched his best friend try and become one with a parking lot, so he figures he's allowed to be a chump just this once. Seeing Jack react so calmly, handle the situation so assuredly, as if this was the hundredth time he'd knelt beside his partner's battered, damaged body, talking to him to keep him awake long enough for medical help to arrive, it had shaken him.

 _It probably_ was _the hundredth time_ , Bozer thinks, and the thought sends his heart rocketing into his throat.

This is the point at which Jack finally sees them outside, glancing over and making eye contact with Riley. He nods shortly, an afterthought of a movement, and gets up, presumably to join them in the hall.

Before he exits, though, he stops, taking a step instead further towards the beeping monitors situated near Mac's shoulders. Jack stoops and smooths a hand over Mac's forehead, then bends further down to press a kiss to his left temple. It's an expression of fiercely protective, paternal love, blatant and open, not a thought given to who might be around to witness it, and something small and sharp twists in Bozer's chest. He whips his head around and stares at the opposite wall of the hallway, stares hard, hoping the stinging in his eyes will calm by the time Jack actually makes it out to them.

"You two can come in, you know," is what Jack says when he pokes his head out the door. He looks more like himself again, the shaking, hunched man who had collapsed into that chair next to Mac's bed visible only in his reddened eyes, the slight slump of shoulders normally held back, broad and brass. "You don't have to stand out here."

"We know, we just… It's hard. It's…"

Riley is finding it difficult to explain so Bozer takes over, elaborating, "It's hard to see him like this. It's _Mac_. His crazy ideas always pan out, he always ends up fine. This time he wasn't. We all saw him fall but going in there..." Now it's Bozer's turn to be lost for words, so he looks to Riley, a silent request for help.

"Going in there makes the damage real," Riley finishes.

Looking back and forth between the two of them, digesting what he's been told, understanding suddenly dawns on Jack's face, and his expression turns to something soft.

"This is the first time you've seen it go this bad for him," he says, and knows he's right without verbal confirmation from either of them. It's enough to see the looks on their faces, the way Bozer looks down, a tremor running through his pursed lips, the way Riley's arms fold tighter as if she's trying to hug herself. "Okay, okay." Jack glances back over his shoulder, through the doorway behind him, then back out at the two members of his team that remain hale and healthy but nonetheless not in the least bit alright.

The moment Jack makes the decision on what to do next is visible to Bozer in the way his body language changes, turning slightly back towards the room, face smoothing into determination, hand coming up slightly towards Riley.

"Come on, then," he says, and his voice is delicate in a way that the voice of a man like Jack shouldn't be able to sound. His hand comes up a little further, a clear invitation, and Bozer looks to Riley, watches her silently as she seems to be considering whether to accept or decline.

Her hand fits into his and he squeezes it tightly, pulling her gently until Riley stands between him and the doorway, and when Bozer is sure they're about to walk in, Jack turns back around, looking at him.

"You too, buddy," Jack says in that same careful voice, and Bozer steps closer.

Without Jack's hand on him, the palm half over the collar of his shirt, half a point of warmth against his skin, Bozer doesn't think he'd have made it into that room for hours, maybe not at all. Jack shepherds them in, holding Riley by the hand and Bozer by the juncture of his neck and shoulder, then stands wordlessly by the side of Mac's bed. He makes no move to release either of them, allowing them to set the pace for how the next minutes are going to go.

Riley moves first. She walks to the edge of the room and grabs a second chair, pulling it over next to the first and sitting down. Her legs come up next, heels of her boots braced against the edge of the seat, arms around her shins. She watches Mac's face from where her chin is propped on her knees, eyes drifting down after a moment to track the steady rise and fall of his chest. As she watches him breathe, Riley's own breathing steadies and evens, getting deeper and calmer as moments drag on.

Bozer is a little more hesitant. He stays put, and for some reason he can't look away from Mac's left hand, laying still and lax on the off-blue sheets of the hospital bed. Mac is never still, certainly not his hands, fingers constantly dancing over every surface, twisting around thin strips of metal, always _moving_. Swallowing and trying to steel his nerves, Bozer goes to move, and stops, barely a centimeter closer before he stills and steps away again, almost running into Jack in the process. Jack takes this in stride, hand gripping tighter, arm now laying heavy across Bozer's back.

The minutes pass, marked only by the steady beeping of the monitor reporting Mac's heart as it continues to beat. Eventually, Bozer clears his throat and moves, walking around the end of the bed to the chair next to Riley's. He sits in it slowly, and tries to find the same reassurance she does in Mac's breaths, in the heart monitor singing its repetitive, mechanical song. There is no comfort to be found for him there, though, as he has spent too much time fabricating sights and sounds, creating impossibilities out of nothing more than a green screen and a computer, to rely on this information alone.

Mac's wrist is solid and warm under his hand when Bozer reaches out to wrap a palm over it, and it's a relief so strong it almost overwhelms him completely. Deliberately loosening his hold so as not to risk in any way damaging his already so badly damaged friend, Bozer adjusts his grip until two fingers rest over the vulnerable skin just under the heel of Mac's hand. The pulse there is strong and loud, louder than the monitor reporting the same information. Bozer drops his forehead down to the mattress, the over-starched fabric stiff and scratchy, but he doesn't care about the discomfort. All he cares about is that pulse, that it keeps on thumping where he can feel it.

From where he now sits only able to see the mattress, the floor beneath it, Bozer hears Jack sit down again, resettling on the side of the bed. There's a creak of the plastic framing, the shift of the sheets, the quiet scuffing of the pillowcase, presumably from Jack laying a hand against the top of Mac's head.

Bozer's other hand, where it hangs down limply at his side, registers the sudden feeling of another person's fingers threading through his, and he returns the grip just as tightly.

"It was a lot easier to love him," he says, the barest hint of an almost-laugh, humorless and drained, behind the words, "when I didn't watch him almost die every week."

Riley's hold squeezes sharply and maintains the pressure for the long moments between the end of his observation and the beginning of her answering one, the mirror she offers up to it.

"It was a lot easier to watch him almost die every week when I didn't love him," she says. Jack doesn't say anything at all, no response from him aside from a quiet rumble of a hum, the vague shift of springs as he adjusts his weight on the mattress across from where they sit.

The quiet that had felt so anxious to Bozer before, so frightening and alive, now hangs over his shoulders like a heavy ache, a deep bruise or a muscle pushed past its limit. It's not scary any more, and though it still hurts, it doesn't hurt like it had in that parking lot, before they were sure Mac would survive. It hurts but it's a hurt Bozer thinks he's strong enough to carry, a determination reinforced by Mac's pulse, beating out a metronome against his fingers. The silence lasts for a while longer until Riley's exhausted voice lifts it once more.

"I don't know whether I hope we get used to this fast or we never get used to it at all."

"You won't." Jack's input is just as quiet and tired as hers. "You won't ever get used to it. I promise."


End file.
